Truth be told, it's been years since my divorce with the spring airguns. They're good and nice but do not cover the type of airgun shooting I love to perform. Maybe I'm just settled, maybe I just turned a page in my life and evolved...

But let us not lie to ourselves. Spring guns have a breeze of magic and nostalgia to them. We all started from that place and we got tons of stories about them from our childhood. Our first hunt, the adventures, the “contests”, the bets with our pals. Our first efforts to improve them and also improve ourselves through them. Careless childhood times that stay forever.

This specific airgun does not bear with a great legacy nor does it come from a famous European factory. However, it does have an interesting story to tell

Back in the day a formidable shooter with lacking skills in modifications wanted a cheap but decent rifle in order to get familiar with dismantling and repairing. In other words, It started it's life assigned as a lab-rat...

That goal was definitely achieved. The owner learned to dismantle it and put it back together, to grease it and to mess with it in many ways. Unfortunately it's behaviour could not keep in par with the royal members of the gunners gun collection...

With much despise it was cast away from the gunner's home like an unwanted dog and came to my possession as a gift. Nice design and balancing, fine wood for buttstock. It had no aim. Loud shots and butt kicking recoil were it's thing. The trigger was as bad as it can get and could not achieve tight groups, but it had this lovely design...

My first though was to change the barrel into a 5.5 one which would be more into character with that rifle. The original barrel was cut right to the block in order to reveal it till I got left with the hole in the middle. Murphy's law led to a series of mistakes... the barrel was finally removed but the block was badly hurt. I could use a new barrel but the aesthetic result would be ugly as hell.

I kept postponing this restoration and the poor rifle was collecting dust and rust in a closet. Occasionally I would pick it up, wipe it, and gave my promises to it that I would eventually take really good care of it

Some months ago while browsing a bunch of internet videos an airgun caught my attention. What a lovely rifle I thought to myself... Wait! Isn't that...? I was fired up and ready to go. That was the moment I knew it was time for radical changes

The block was everything.I knew it would have the most important part in the way that restoration would proceed. I had an important decision to make, either to make the best I could with the old rifle or to rebuilt it from scratch as a new one. There simply was no room for something in between to that project. The first thing in my drawing board was the block (based off course on the original one). As a matter of fact I made some improvements to it's dimensions in order to decrease the tolerance of some parts that would go with it. My experience to something like this was close to zero but my passion and drive was immense! I knew that it had to be done in fine detail less than tenth of a centimetre otherwise the holes would not align to the main pin neither to the transfer port, it would just not lock right...

Next in turn was finding the raw material. That was a bit tough to find a piece close to the dimensions I needed but I finally spotted a “scrap place” and bought three pieces of solid iron

15 hours later the 1st block stood proud on my mill. Carefully marking of the centre hole, measuring, testing and then... disaster stroke. All work for nothing due to a single mistake. For just a few millimetres the whole block would be placed more to the front the be barrel would not seal at all. And even if I could fix that from modding the transfer I would still be unable to fix the way that it would cock.Back to the drawing board and thereafter to the mill. Several hours later the block was thoroughly made and it fitted just perfect! One of the small innovations implemented to it was that the barrel was fitted to it with just two screws. Nice n easy, you unscrew these two and change the barrel with another one any time you like. Even the screw that was placed to the pin of the corking arm made the whole dismantling procedure way easier. “The beginning is everything” they say. I had just made a great start and build myself a huge momentum to carry on my project

Here are some pictures of the new block compared to the old one

The Barrel.

Well, the block was ready to receive the barrel. But which one? If I'd bought a new one the cost would climb too much and I did had a specific limit in mind. My good friend Stelios came to the rescue immediately and provided me with a good ol 5.5 Weihraugh slightly modified. I didn't like the old work to it much so I worked on it and gave it a new 1/2 unf threading. I lathed it on the back very thoroughly and precisely. Finally it was placed on and block as if it was made for each other

The old threading

The old crowning

The new threading

The new crowning

The lathed barrel

The fitting

Choosing of how I'd “dress” the barrel I changed my mind 3 timesFirst I placed a suppressor

Then I changed my mind and placed a shroud

Finally I selected a combination of both and ended up with a shroud-suppressor

The piston.

Many and serious modifications there. First of all I put in on a “diet” to reduce the inertia. I lathed it externally in various points and internally to about one millimetre and placed a Teflon sheet that would wrap around the spring and not allow it to come in contact with the piston surface.There is a buttoning using rings front and back and also made a small modification to the point where the seal joins the piston. I placed an ecopur sear with much expanding lip.

The trigger.

Oh my! A lot of thought went to this one. It was really in bad shape to begin with. I fully dismantle it and studied all it's parts and functions. Everything was smoothed, some screws were dropped out and some parts modded. Also with the addition of 2 new screws I changed it's functionality. Finally I replaced it's springs with some softer ones, greased it and reassembled it. Nothing in this trigger would even remind the old bad one.

At some point I found out that if I apply some precharge to a certain sear it would improve the way the trigger worked. Here testing with a screw.

Later tested with a short alen-screw

I kept it's original spring since it was in great shape with just few shots to it's lifetime.The guides were made by white delrin, pretty tight to the spring

The back guide was modded to be placed on a solution that replaced a ball-bearing due to lack of space there

A Sandwich type top hat was made and placed with two washers, one on the front and one at the back to create a “bearing” effect there too.

All bolts where replaced with stainless ones. The buttstock holes were expanded and hand made bolt-holders where placed. There had a two-folded part. The bolts would align better. The rifle would stay in place and also the screw gaps would be filled in a lovely aesthetic way. For the latter part I also lathed the bolt-heads to make them smaller in diameter, less bulky looking now.

The cylinder, the cocking arm and the block were in bad shape. Rust had the best of them ages ago. After some considering thinking I chose to chrome them. Affordable solution with great lifespan and likes subjective to the viewer. You either hate it or love itPhotos of the rusted part

Corrosive was used to the buttstock to remove the original varnish, some 80grade sandpapering for the colour, and the glory of walnut started to emerge I used sandpaper of 120, 180,240, 320, 400, 600 etc... till 1200 grade. When it was smooth as a marble I started working it with linseed oil, alternating between red alkanet root and colourless. I picked the British brand ccl for that. I would like to thank all the friends who shared good info to me for that matter. I came to realise that woodwork is something that demands work and love to it. It totally changed my opinion of pricey well hand made wooden buttstocks. Not that expensive any more to my opinion.

The pin of the cocking arm was made out of a spear gun rod. I carefully made one side of it just a tad smaller around 1mm so that is would only go in one way and fit there in place. The other pin was made out of an old drill

One of the problems was that it was difficult to cock the gun. I changed that by cutting shorter the hard spring it had and by placing an additional softer spring to the back

The transfer port, due to the larger volume of the air chamber was redefined from 3(!) mm to 3.5. Nothing was left to chance all moving parts were inspected, smoothed and improved. Here a test assembly during the whole process.

To top all that and for reasons of personal research I though to place a kind of “recoil reducer”. A part used to much powerful firearms. It's usability is controversial. I will say that I did feel a small difference although it might just be a placebo effect. You can find it on the market in various sizes, designs and prices. I decided to create one myself. How? Allow me to keep this a secret!

After countless hours of assembling, studying, working and staying up late, everything was finally ready to see how it handles on the target...

Testing the JSB Express pellets which although they performed good on the chrony and went terrible on target, I just couldn't keep a tight group with their unpredictable behaviour.

Speed Results. Jsb 14,3 1) 802 2) 805 3) 800 4) 805 5) 801

Testing the 15.9These went pretty good but did had a few flyers...

Speed Results. Jsb 15,9 1) 755 2) 750 3) 751 4) 756 5) 751

Testing the 18.1The heavy would fit really nicely in the barrel and had a very good consistency. Maybe the best of all other pellets. No flyers at all and in par for the 1st place with the FTT

Speed Results. Jsb 18,1 1) 702 2) 705 3) 701 4) 700 5) 702

Testing the PCP2The pcp2 really let me down. As with other airguns the proved once more that they don't group very well at all. The only good thing about them is the high speeds they recorded on the chrony...

Speed Results. PCP2 14,5 1) 810 2) 812 3) 816 4) 805 5) 809

Testing the FTT.The FTT traditionally go well with the Weihrauch barrels and this was also the case here. Really good groups. Some would fit the barrel in a more loose or tight manner and maybe that's why there is a bit sparse consistency. Also compared to the slightly heavier 16JSB they did seem to be of less power.

Speed Results. FTT 14,6 1) 790 2) 792 3) 789 4) 785 5) 782

In General comments we can say that the rifle was good on targeting and with a nice variaty of pellets that work nice with it.Another conclution is that since the heavyer pellets showed drop of power, it seems it was all set-up good. Obliously if the rifle was oversprung, it would force the heavyer pellets to raise more power.

Finaly some photos of the end result with a small lightweight 4X32 scope that makes short range targeting so enjoyable!

Epilogue...At the end of a long day after finishing my shooting I took it at my hands and wiped the finger print stains away. I was finaly calm enough to marvel the way the sun reflected on it's chrome parts. I gently placed it in the case and just as I was closing the zipper I could swear it gave me a smile of appriciation. It was not the unwated dog anymore. It had a new warm home and it would be treaded well from that point on...